


Along the Line of Colleagues

by bakedgarnet



Category: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Background story, F/F, Pre-Movie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-06 21:06:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17352578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bakedgarnet/pseuds/bakedgarnet
Summary: Olivia Octavius knew that she had quite a few flaws. Her studio apartment was a mess, she could never remember where she put her glasses, and she had gotten her bike stolen three times already since moving in a year ago. She was overzealous when it came to science, so much so that it overshadowed a lot of her personal relationships, and…  she was twenty-five years old, infatuated with her thirty-eight year old mentor.





	Along the Line of Colleagues

Olivia Octavius knew that she had quite a few flaws. Her studio apartment was a mess, she could never remember where she put her glasses, and she had gotten her bike stolen three times already since moving in a year ago. She was overzealous when it came to science, so much so that it overshadowed a lot of her personal relationships, and… she was twenty-five years old, infatuated with her thirty-eight year old mentor.  
  
Her mentor happened to also be on her way to her apartment in the next half-hour.  
  
When Olivia got excited about science, it was for the wonder that came with everything about it. She was obsessed with possibilities of what could be if she just pushed the envelope a little bit. Her dissertation was on Quantum Theory, for crying out loud. When Olivia got excited about Dr. May Parker, though, it was for the wonder that came with her. She had done things with bio-engineering that Olivia could only dream of, and she had wild fantasies about making fantastical scientific breakthroughs with her just as often as she had fantasies about being pushed up against the nearest wall.  
  
The fact that Dr. Parker was everything that she loved in one— science and brilliant women— was a miracle. This was also the reason why she suddenly kicked herself for not having kept up with the tidiness of her home. She would be ringing her mentor in from downstairs in half an hour, and there were papers scattered everywhere. Post-it note reminders clung to every available surface, bright and obnoxious. The blankets atop her bed were flung this way and that, mostly due to her wild sleeping habits, but also because she never bothered to make it in the first place. Miscellaneous _stuff_  cluttered every surface, and in an apartment so tiny there was nowhere to put it all.  
  
So she’d simply throw it away.  
  
She breezed around her one bedroom apartment, stepping between the tiny coffee table in front of her beat up leather couch and swiping all of the junk on top of it into a black trash bag. She was seconds from moving onto the next cluttered surface before jumping suddenly. She bent over and ripped the bag open, tearing through its contents of empty bottles of water, napkins, and paper plates in order to obtain one manilla envelope. When her hand brushed against it, she pulled the yellow envelope out triumphantly, checking it for stains and coming away clean.  
  
She couldn’t accidentally throw _that_ out, considering it was exactly what Dr. Parker was on her way to pick up from her home.  
  
With a grimace, she sat it gently back down onto the table and continued her deep cleaning of the room. She lugged the plastic bag over to the front door once it was full, and went to work at washing the few dishes that she owned, piled up in the sink. With the bathroom scrubbed down and her floor as clean as she could get it— she had a cheap vacuum that only stayed on for a few seconds at a time, so cleaning got annoying _very_ quickly— she dipped her hands into foamy water and got to work. She only had so many plates, the majority of the surfaces she ate off of were made of paper, so that task didn’t take nearly as long. The longest part about it was waiting for the tap to get hot, and the slowness of that allowed her to pass the time waiting by cursing her building in mumbles to herself.  
  
After the dishes were washed up, she reached the front door in a couple of strides. Slinging the trash bag over her shoulder, Olivia made her way out into the hallway toward the elevator so that she could drop off all of her trash downstairs.  
  
The trip down in the elevator was uneventful until she reached the third floor. A younger man stepped inside with his german shepherd, a neon yellow leash around its neck. He stopped to look up at her, wireless headphones nestled into his ears, and she gave him a small smile of acknowledgement. He returned it by flicking his chin up at her, and she tried not to stare at his afro’s dyed blue tips in fascination.  
  
His music was loud enough that she could hear it muffled, but they weren’t on the elevator long enough for her to grow annoyed by it. She let the man and his dog out first before lugging her bag of trash out next. Her heeled boots clacked against the tile of the lobby floor and carried her all the way through crunchy leaves to the dumpster out front. Lifting the lid revealed a sour scent that left her nose scrunched and her mouth screwed up, but once the bag was inside, she turned on her heel and went right back in. The cold did not make lingering outside any longer than she needed to favorable.  
  
Halfway back to the elevator, she heard her name.  
  
“Liv?”  
  
Whirling around and clasping her hands in front of her chest, she released a nervous chuckle and smiled brightly at the woman she had been waiting to see all day.  
  
“Dr. Parker! I didn’t see you pull up.” She raked her eyes over the woman before her. Medium length brown hair was pulled back into a neat bun, her bang stopping above her eyebrows with two strands on either side brushing her chin. Dr. Parker still wore her lab coat, something that made Olivia swallow heavily before remembering herself and straightening her spine up.  
  
“Oh, I walked. Traffic was terrible up the street, and it’s not that bad out.”  
  
Liv parted her lips to dissent, taking a glance behind Dr. Parker and looking out through the tall windows in the lobby. It was cold even for autumn, and all her mentor wore was a lab coat over tailored gray dress pants and a white button-down.  
  
She thought twice about disagreeing with her, though, so instead she simply said, “You can come upstairs. I have all of the data you wanted for Project 39.”  
  
The elevator ride back upstairs was quieter than the last. Her mentor was one of few words, typically, but Olivia was unsure of whether or not that had always been for professional reasons. They had never met outside of the lab before.  
  
Nervousness twisted around Olivia’s gut until she forced herself to take a deep breath or three without being noticed. Stopping at the seventh floor, the two exited the lift and Olivia led Dr. Parker down the tiled floors of the hallway until she unlocked her own door.  
  
“I hope you’ll excuse the mess— I don’t usually have company.”  
  
She stopped at the kitchenette to wash her hands of whatever germs had gotten to her when taking the garbage out and dried them on her jeans for lack of paper towels. Glancing around the room suddenly, she squinted her eyes in concentration as she searched for where she had put her glasses.  
  
Dr. Parker meandered about the small space, which really meant pacing back and forth on the other side of the coffee table, and allowed her eyes to rove about. Olivia suddenly felt uncomfortable with her home being beneath her scrutinous gaze.  
  
Instead of wasting time by continuing the search for her glasses, she leaned down and picked up the envelope from atop the coffee table, handing it over across the tiny space with a small smile.  
  
“This is for you. Everything should be as you wanted it.”  
  
Dr. Parker grabbed the package from her and tucked it beneath her arm without looking at it.  
  
“Liv,” she sighed, “you didn’t tell me you were living _here_.”  
  
Olivia laughed awkwardly, “Dr. Parker, really, I love it here—“  
  
“You know you can call me May, sweetheart. And you don’t have to lie to me. I was a broke grad student once, too.”  
  
The tenderness of May’s low voice sent a sliver of electricity up the back of Olivia’s spine, and she nervously steepled her fingers together in front of her sternum. Instead of standing there, frozen as she wanted to be, she lowered herself down onto the couch. Feeling around first to make sure that she wasn’t sitting on the very glasses she was looking for, she sunk into the cushion.  
  
“Well, it’s kind of you to worry, but I really don’t mind it,” Olivia’s eyes followed May as she walked around the coffee table to sit down beside her. The couch shifted under the new weight. Her hands absently groped around the creases of the seat as she continued, “I spend a lot of my time at the lab, anyway. Once I finish my dissertation, I’m moving somewhere nicer.”  
  
“Looking for these?” May asked with a knowing smile, softening her face just enough that Olivia was slightly less intimidated. Her dexterous hands reached up to remove Olivia’s white framed glasses from her nose, making the view in front of her nothing but a smear of colors before she placed them back.  
  
Closing her eyes in embarrassment, she pinched the bridge of her nose with a defeated sigh.  
  
“I swear I don’t normally do that,” she tried to say.  
  
May simply chuckled. Only one hand dropped down from her glasses to rest on her lap, while the other lingered at Olivia’s jaw. She felt her cheeks suffuse with warmth first, and the rest of her body followed.  
  
“You’re such a fascinating girl, Liv. I really am happy to have you on the team.”  
  
Shocked into a stupor, Olivia neglected to respond. She was far too busy trying to remember how to breathe.  
  
Remembering herself, May pulled her hand back and clasped her other one tightly as if to restrain any further touches.  
  
“Sorry. I should get back to the lab, though, with these results. You enjoy the rest of your day off—“ As she made a move to rise up from the couch, Olivia broke through her frozen state to stop her with a hand on her thigh.  
  
The placement was entirely accidental, she had merely wanted to reach out to halt the body beside her, but she paused again with wide eyes that slowly rose to meet May’s electric blue gaze. Realization of what she was doing set in like a shock to her nervous system.  
  
“You—“ She cleared her throat, “You don’t have to apologize.”  
  
May dropped her eyes down to Olivia’s hand and gave her that knowing smile once more.  
  
“You should know better. So should I.”  
  
Olivia felt her heart thunder in her chest as May flicked her gaze back up at her, the air around them feeling like an exposed wire.  
  
“Then what are you doing here?”  
  
“It’s your day off,” May chuckled reflexively, except her eyes darted off elsewhere instead of holding their place.  
  
“Do you know how many times that’s ever stopped me from running all sorts of errands for you in the past?” Olivia said, noticing her quiet her voice had gotten, and she wondered when they had started whispering. “The answer is none.”  
  
May slouched a bit as she sighed, dropping her hand down over where Olivia’s still rested and curling it around her slender fingers, decorative rings on nearly every one.  
  
“You don’t have to do this,” May murmured.  
  
“I know,” Olivia breathed out, and then she was leaning in to May’s turned face.  
  
She was inches away from her cheek, and Olivia paused as she watched May’s bottom lip get chewed to pieces between two rows of straight teeth before she turned her head and put their lips a breath away from each other.  
  
They held that position for a long while, suspended in a moment of decision that could send their lives down very different paths depending on what happened next. Olivia couldn’t stand the tension, always needing to be on the move, and waiting was the worst thing on her nerves.  
  
She closed her eyes.  
  
A single breath rushed against her lips before suddenly it was gone, and Olivia knew what she would see— or wouldn’t— when she opened her eyes again. So she took her time doing so. May was up off of the couch and halfway toward the door with the envelope beneath her arm, and Olivia’s heart was in her throat.  
  
“Things won’t go back to normal after this, you know,” she called out in the small room.  
  
May paused several steps away from the door and turned back around to face her with indecision in her gaze. It was an unfamiliar sight, seeing her be unsure.  
  
Olivia was up and walking toward her before she knew what her feet were doing, and May didn’t move closer or away.  
  
“I know what I’m doing— if this is even about me— and I can live with the choices I make. I’ve been doing it my whole life.”  
  
May looked into her eyes like she was seeing her anew, gaze taking her in and picking her apart to try and rebuild the schema she’d had for her all of this time. Olivia felt naked beneath her gaze, and, shockingly, it wasn’t an unwelcome feeling.  
  
“I don’t want to be the reason that beautiful mind of yours gets off track,” May finally confessed, reaching up and cupping her jaw again, “I have a responsibility to you as your mentor, and I take it very seriously.”  
  
“If my father couldn’t get me off track, I don’t think anything can,” Olivia murmured somberly. She was met by heavy silence between the both of them that pressed against her skin like a weighted blanket. May went to withdraw her hand, and Olivia’s shot up to hold it in place.  
  
She tried again.  
  
“Well, if you change your mind… and want to be irresponsible for once… you know where to find me.” The words felt too bold leaving her mouth, and she was terrified that she had crossed some line despite all of the ones crossed to lead them to this very moment.  
  
May looked at her with amusement twinkling in her gaze, and she brushed her thumb back and forth across her cheek before withdrawing her hand from beneath Olivia’s and turning on her heel toward the door.  
  
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Liv.”  
  
Olivia watched the door open and close behind her with heat radiating from her body and a partially open mouth.  
  
“ _Holy shit_ ,” she breathed.

**Author's Note:**

> First time writing for these two, and I have to say I'm enjoying playing around with their dynamic greatly. Thanks for reading!  
> You can find me on tumblr and twitter @ bakedgarnet and support me on ko-fi for early viewing and bonus content by the same name. 
> 
> Much love :)


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